


The Art of Life

by Yeomanrand



Category: Bourne (Movies), Bourne Legacy (2012)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Memory, Misses Clause Challenge, POV Female Character, POV Third Person, Post-Movie(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Present Tense, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-19
Updated: 2013-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-05 04:49:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1089806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeomanrand/pseuds/Yeomanrand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marta can't not remember what happened in the Philippines.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art of Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackbird/gifts).



The buzzing in Marta's head is so loud she can't breathe.

She can't breathe and she's not sure where she is. Her only certainties are the too-bright sunlight streaming through the gap in the cheap curtains, and the too-loud traffic noise rising up from below. She swears she can hear the rasp of a razor over skin and slides off the mattress to tuck herself in the corner of the room with the blue, coarsely woven cotton blanket still draped around her, one hand over her mouth. 

She can't breathe, because she can't hear over the buzzing _and_ her breath. And she needs to know who else is here, who's in the bathroom. _Shaving_.

She bites the inside of her lower lip, forcing air shallowly through her nose so she doesn't black out. Someone, male, outside the window swears cheerfully in French. The man in the bathroom — _Aaron_ , some faint, clear part of her brain supplies, _Aaron Cross_ — hums an unfamiliar tune under his breath and taps the razor against the sink before opening the tap.

_Aaron Cross. Kenneth Kitsom. France. Possibly Paris? The outskirts, if they are._

Her head clears a bit and the facts slot together. The pounding of her heart slows to a regular beat. Aaron comes out of the bathroom wrapped in only a towel. She's sure he doesn't think she sees his quick glance at her where she's half-buried beneath a blanket in the corner of the room. His humming turns to a cheery whistle. She forces herself to take a deep breath, stretching her legs out in front of her.

Tires squeal below them. Honking and cursing follow and she curls tighter in the corner. Throwing the blanket over her head and squeezing her eyes tightly closed, she tries to stop the memory before it starts.

_Hands tight on Aaron's waist. Feeling him sag, the blood oozing. The motorcycle thrumming beneath them, the second coming alongside. A killer, nameless. And Aaron can't — it's taking all his strength to keep them upright. She has to. The dark hollow eye of a gun. Her foot lashing out, steel and flesh beneath and then the sound of metal and rubber screaming and the solid thunk of meat and bone shatter-splattering against concrete._

She shoots to her feet, trailing the blanket and knocking over the lamp on her way to the tiny bathroom. She barely makes it to the toilet before coughing up bile.

* * *

Marta is sitting. She is sitting on the couch in the little flat they paid for with cash up front for a week. She knows this because Aaron told her before he went out. Brought her the information with black coffee — no milk and two sugars. Dark and sweet and her hands only shook a little when she took the mug from him.

She sits. She breathes. She used to be a very competent scientist in a pristine laboratory and now she's...she doesn't know what she is.

_A killer._

This time her hands do shake, violently, and she sets the mug down on the glass coffee table in front of her before she can spill the still-hot liquid inside. Her chest and throat tighten again and she closes her eyes, trying to listen.

Aaron went downstairs. To the pâtisserie around the corner. He hasn't even been gone five minutes. He shut the windows before he left to cut the traffic noise but she can still hear the faint hum outside. The couch is firm beneath her thighs and backside. She can see dust-motes tumbling in the light coming through the glass.

She knows she needs to eat. Some of this lightheadedness and nausea are due to lack of food. Some.

She would rather worry about Aaron than focus on the other matters churning her stomach.

She hears footfalls on the stairs; Aaron's heavier tread and a pair of heels. They stop together; Marta hears the key scrape, then turn in the lock. She stands, picks up her coffee again to hide; doesn't need him knowing she's been staring at the wall unseeing for she's not sure how long. Moves behind the couch to defend; doesn't know who the stranger is, if she's a threat to him. To both of them.

The buzzing is back. The door creaks open.

Before, the soft aroma of fresh-baked croissants and the hint of chocolate and raspberry carried in with Aaron would have held her whole attention. Now, she watches his face, watches the younger-than-Marta bottle-redheaded woman following him. He's tense, though not as tense as he would be if she had a weapon on him. The square set of his shoulders and the way he keeps this stranger in his peripheral vision tells her so. But she doesn't carry herself like any of the people who'd tried to kill them before.

Not deadly, but a threat.

Why did he bring her? 

* * *

Nicolette Parsons. Nicky.

They're sitting in the living room; Aaron near Marta on the couch, between Marta and Nicky, while Nicky is perched to his left on the edge of the overstuffed armchair like she's ready to bolt.

Marta doesn't trust her. The feeling is mutual. She sympathizes.

All three of them have hands wrapped around ceramic mugs; Marta and Aaron are drinking coffee, but Nicky had asked for water only. A chipped orange and blue plate holds several croissants; some filled, some plain; Aaron's effort to tempt Marta's appetite. She picks one up, nibbles, tasting only ash and burning gasoline. Setting the coffee mug down, she places the croissant on top.

Aaron makes a helpless little gesture with his hands and Nicky nods. Marta looks between them.

"You were fine," Aaron says to her, reaching over to touch the back of her hand. "You were fine the entire way across the ocean, and we got here and...and then you weren't fine anymore. And I don't know..."

It's easy enough for her to finish his sentence. _How to fix this. How to make you fine again._

She bites the inside of her lip again and looks down at the table.

Silence stretches between them. 

Nicky sighs, setting her own mug down. "You probably don't remember," she says, finally, addressing Aaron. "I never had all the details on Outcome, but I watched Treadstone closely. They were my job."

Treadstone. The name raises Marta's hackles, though they were a separate division, a mere hair's breadth apart from her own work.

"Often, program failures were due to the development of psychological disorders in subjects."

She folds her hands on her knees, her mouth twisting into a fleeting grimace. She schools her features back to neutral, looking between Marta and Aaron.

"It didn't always take. What we put them through was hard. On them. And sometimes on some of us. The 'support' staff."

Marta hears Aaron's breath catch, quiet in the back of his throat. He shifts a little closer to her. She doesn't pull away, gaze still focused on Nicky.

"Outcome was supposed to eliminate some of those pitfalls," Marta says. This is familiar, safe ground that should be anything but. "Chemical suppression of certain neurological pathways at the same time others were encouraged. Memory's subjective, though. We could never get quantitative results explaining how well our tinkering with the synapses worked. If at all."

She looks at Aaron, hoping he'll see the apology in her gaze.

"There were rumors about the next phase…" She swallows, swallows again. Picks up the croissant and nibbles. Anything to keep the bile back.

"We met the next phase," Aaron says, voice oil-stain dark and concrete rough. Marta barely manages to excuse herself to the bathroom.

She finishes, flushes, dampens a threadbare washcloth without standing and wipes her face. She isn't surprised by a soft tap on the doorframe, though it's Nicky and not Aaron. 

Nicky sitting down on the bathroom floor with her _does_ surprise her.

"Not so much preventing the formation of traumatic memories as preventing their conscious recollection?" she asks, tucking her heels almost against her backside. Making herself small.

The ceramic of the toilet seat cools Marta's cheek; she shrugs. "Preventing traumatic recall. It seems to have worked with Aaron. He was shot…"

_You've been shot!_

_It's all right._

"Marta."

She shakes her head and looks at Nicky, at the unnatural hang of the pale pink t-shirt advertising EuroDisney, the faded jeans, at uncertain hands touching the ends of the tidy chin-length bob. At the heavy canvas shoulderbag Nicky hadn't left in the front room.

"I can't." She doesn't know until she's spoken the words will come out half-croak, half-wail.

"I know." Nicky reaches out, carefully takes the cloth, uses it to wipe Marta's hands. "Once upon a time, there were other things you thought you couldn't."

_The crunch of metal and bone._

"Marta."

She blinks, Nicky's voice calling her back again, sees her crooked but honest smile.

"I can't help. I can't undo what Da-...what Bourne did. The whole clusterfuck." 

She takes a breath, handing the cloth back. "But I also can't be sorry I made the choices I did. I survived. You survived."

Her fingers worry the cuticle of her thumb; she looks through the bathroom wall.

"We weren't the collateral damage we were supposed to be." Her voice, soft and strange, sets a sympathetic hum in the pit of Marta's stomach, smoothing some of the jagged edges. Nicky blinks, focuses on Marta. Speaks crisply.

"People we care about survived because of what we did when we did it. It's not easy. It's probably never going to be easy for us. Not like it seems for Cross."

"He –" she starts, has to stop and start again. "He has dreams. But his stay in the dark." 

Where they belong. Hers like to come out and play in the light.

"Yes."

Marta sits up, rests her back against the side of the tub. Scrubs her face with both hands. Regards Nicky, looking back at her. Raises her gaze to find Aaron leaning against the wall across from the door, brow furrowed, hands hanging loose by his sides. 

Giving them space. To escape, if need be. To have this conversation. But there. There all along. And here, now, because Marta chose. Because her survival instinct is as strong as his.

She's not alone. Not the only one who remembers. 

Nicky nods, stands. Marta follows to her feet, holds out her hand. "Nicky…"

Nicky takes it, but also shakes her head. "I do all right on my own. The fewer of us in one place, the less likely someone will take notice."

They walk to the door; Nicky's phone buzzes. She pulls it from her pocket, glances, gives the tiniest smile and tucks it away again.

"Keep moving," Nicky says, already heading down the stairs. 

"Stay safe," Marta answers, leaning against Aaron; he wraps his arm around her back, his fingers warm and low on her side.

**Author's Note:**

> Many Thanks to Scratchy Wilson for serving as short notice but very helpful beta.
> 
> Title from "The art of life is to enjoy a little and endure very much" - William Hazlitt


End file.
